# Shape: change the height of the board.

> Every Hexodic turn reshapes the ground the stones fight on — one cell, one tier, close to your last stone.

Shape is the second step of every Hexodic turn: raise or lower one unlocked cell by one tier near the stone you just Projected. Reach, when Shape is mandatory, and the lowering budget explained.

Canonical HTML: https://hexodic.com/rules/shape
Site index for agents: https://hexodic.com/llms.txt

Shape is the second step of every Hexodic turn: the player raises or lowers one unlocked cell by exactly one tier, and the cell must be within 2 steps of the stone they just Projected. Shape is how Hexodic players build high ground for themselves and take it away from their opponent.

Reviewed 2026-09-15 against the Hexodic rules engine.

## What Shape can do

- **Raise** a cell from tier 0 to 1, or from tier 1 to 2. Raises are unlimited.
- **Lower** a cell from tier 2 to 1, or from tier 1 to 0. Each player has a lowering budget of 6 for the whole game.
- A Shape may target an empty cell, a cell holding an enemy stone, or a cell holding your own stone.
- A locked cell can never be Shaped — that is what an [Echo-Lock](/rules/lock) is for.

## When Shape is mandatory

Shape is mandatory whenever at least one legal Shape targets a cell that is not occupied by your own stone. If every legal Shape would only change cells under your own stones, Shape is optional. If your Project was skipped by the capture cooldown, Shape is skipped too, because there is no Projected stone to measure reach from.

## Why Shape matters

Shape is the only rule that changes [tiers](/rules/tiers), and tiers decide everything else: a stone on tier 0 cannot be encircled, a Move capture needs strictly higher ground, the [Network](/rules/network) win needs tier-2 cells, and the tiebreak counts tier-2 stones first. Raising the cell under an enemy stone from tier 0 to tier 1 is often the first step toward capturing it.

## Related

- [Project](/rules/project) — the step that sets Shape's anchor.
- [Capture](/rules/capture) — how tiers turn into captures.
- [Glossary: Shape and Lowering budget](/glossary#shape)
- [All rules](/rules)

[Get the Hexodic app](/download) and watch how one raise changes a capture.

## Where to go next

- [Tiers](https://hexodic.com/rules/tiers) — Height, high ground, and what tier control buys you.
- [Strategy](https://hexodic.com/strategy) — The principles that follow from the rules, not from habit.
- [How it works](https://hexodic.com/how-it-works) — The whole turn, in plain language.

## Questions this page answers

- What is Shape in Hexodic?
- Can you lower a cell in Hexodic?